Anarchy Online - Shadowlands Toured

Thanks to GameSpy for their in-character guide tour of Anarchy Online:Shadowlands, the newest expansion pack for Funcom's PC cyberpunk MMORPG. The article references the game's botched launch back in 2001: "The very name brings up images of anarchy when one remembers the disastrous first effort at colonizing the planet. Basic services didn't work, colonists disappeared, weapons and equipment suffered from mysterious breakdowns, and there was fear that the entire notum project would have to be abandoned." But it goes on to suggest that: "Even now Omni-Tek Corporation has difficulty recruiting colonists. That's unfortunate, though, because the corporation has long since stabilized the situation." Can/should MMORPGs be given a second chance after a bad launch?

Comments

Acceptable? Not nowadays

[Lord_Dweomer]

I beta'd AO. It was a blast...aside from never being able to do anything because of the lag. Hell, I was racing between buildings in my flying car on the last day of beta when they pimped everybody out. However, the launch was unacceptable. As is the current trend these days...you release a very buggy game, and then patch the hell out of it....or wait a while, and try to sell and "expansion" that fixes the bugs....getting people to pay more for your mistakes.

Back when EQ was first starting, it was acceptable. People would tolerate a few bugs on launch. Now though, with a new MMORPG coming out practically every week, the bar is getting higher and higher for how stable your launch is. There are too many MMORPGs out there for people to care about all the problems the game has. They'll just find a new one that IS going to have a good launch. And I haven't even addressed the issue of releasing without much content and planning to add it in with a later expansion *cough*Starwars:Galaxies*cough*.

They're not going to play AO anyway...

[krinsh]

when they're busy playing music or trying to 'become Jedi' in SW Galaxies. I'd like to see a chart of the massive drop in other MMORPG subscriptions when that particular game came out. [I've quit playing DAoC and Earth and Beyond - I was considering going back to EnB once they went to war in the storyline - but I won their screenshot contest BACK IN MAY and despite getting two emails asking for my address and fax number to sign a release; I have not gotten my prize - so I'm not going to waste money on a game with that kind of 'community support'.]